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Friday, August 31, 2012

I'm not selling these books for the purpose of adding to our adoption fund. The money from the sale of these books will be used to pay for Chinese curriculum so that our current children will be able to begin learning Mandarin Chinese as well as some Chinese DVDs for Lily. At 4.5, we feel like we might have a chance at keeping her fluent if we work hard to expose her to lots of Mandarin in songs, tv shows, movies, etc.

If you'd like to buy any of these, just post a comment here. Comments are moderated, so you won't see it show up, but I will see the comments. Leave your email address and tell me which books you want. I'll send you a paypal money request and get them in the mail as soon as I receive payment.

Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages

Paperback

$12 including shipping to the US

Story of the World Volume 3: Early Modern Times

Hardcover

$16.00 including shipping

Story of the World 3- Activity Book

Paperback

$27 including shipping

Writing with Ease 1

First 22 student pages are missing, but you don't need them at all. They are just sheets of lined paper.

$17 including shipping.

Writing With Ease 2

First 15 student pages are missing, but you really do not need them. They are just lined paper for the student to write on.

$17 including shipping

Writing With Ease 4

About 10 student pages are missing, but like the other grade levels, these are just lined paper anyway.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Today, we met our matching grant goal! Thanks to everyone who has donated! I will close the giveaway on Friday night at midnight, as planned but the delivery of the Kindle Fire will be delayed just a bit.

Amazon is all sold out of the Kindle Fire right now, so my plan to have it sent directly to the winner just will not work. Of course, right? I have ordered a brand new in the box Kindle Fire from a third party seller and I'm praying that it arrives very soon. Once it arrives, I'll send it to our winner.

In the meantime, my mom and I are working hard making more jewelry so that our jewelry winners will have lots to choose from.

Even though we've met our goal for the matching grant, please feel free to enter the giveaway. We still need to raise about $10,000 more in about 8 weeks. Every dollar helps, so if you only want to give $1, your donation is still very welcome!

Monday, August 27, 2012

UPDATE---- I was planning on ordering the Kindle Fire on Amazon to be shipped directly to the winner. This has been the easiest way to do giveaways for most other adoptive families. I found out today that Amazon is out of stock. I have ordered a brand new in the box, never opened Kindle Fire from a third party seller, but I will not be able to have it sent overnight. Instead, I am having it sent here so that I can be sure it is brand new and never opened, then I'll mail to the winner.

SO I need some input- do I keep the giveaway open until I have this in my hands and know I can ship? Or do I end the giveaway as scheduled, choose the winner on Saturday, then wait for the Kindle Fire to arrive here?

We still have over $200 to raise to meet the matching grant and only a few days left of the giveaway so I have decided to triple the entries! This will apply to all of the donations received so far as well as any from now til Friday night. I'll choose the winner via Random.org on Saturday morning (September 1) and email the winner right away.

1 winner will receive the Kindle Fire, shipped directly to his/her home from Amazon!

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Our agency tells me it is typically 3-5 weeks from "in process" to LOA, but I know several families who have gotten LOA in 2 weeks.

Basically this means we are waiting on LOA any day now.

If we get LOA this week, there is a really great chance that we could travel over the Thanksgiving holiday and that would be wonderful for so many reasons!

I'm trying not to get my hopes up, because we are still early in the process and there are still many things that could delay us, even if we do get LOA today.

Meanwhile, I sent a list of questions to our agency so that we can get an update and more information about Lily.

We want to know her favorite toys, foods, nick name, height/weight/shoe size, medications, recent illness, what methods work well for comforting her, etc. This will help us a little during the first few days with her in China.

It will be so great to see new pictures of her and learn more about her. I've already picked out her outfits for our time in China. A sweet friend saved ALL of her size 4/4T clothing for us. We have enough clothing for all seasons to last until she grows into the next size.

Two of my friends wanted to help us raise the money we need to complete the adoption. One friend covered the cost of Kindle Fire for us to use in a giveaway and another friend offered us a $1,000 matching grant. Please consider donating $10 to help us bring Lily home. We're also giving away gift certificates as second chance prizes. As of right now, we have only $160, not even enough to cover the cost of the Kindle Fire ($199), so we are hoping for more entries.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

WOW!!! After I posted what you see below, I was contacted by another donor and we were offered a matching grant! I am floored. Shocked. Amazed at what has been given to us in one day. I'm making bracelets and crying this afternoon. We are so thankful and so touched.

If you ever thought about making a donation to help us bring Lily home, now is the time. You can win a great prize and double your donation.

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A sweet friend has generously offered to help us cover our agency bills by donating a Kindle Fire for us to give away! This friend is such a blessing to me. Her generosity is overwhelming, especially when she could probably really use the money herself.

As of right now, we still have not gotten a refund from our old agency. They owe us $3000.

Our next bill for our new agency is $3800. We have sold and saved about $1800 so far, so we need about $2000 to pay this next bill. Or we need our old agency to give our money back but that will not happen anytime son.

The giveaway will begin right now and end on August 31. I'll use Random.org to draw winners on Sept 1. Here are the prize details-

1 winner will receive the Kindle Fire, shipped directly to his/her home from Amazon!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Your kids get invited to birthday parties, right? And you find yourself buying cards several times a year for these birthdays? Would you please consider buying a years supply of cards for only $1 each to help us with our adoption? The cards are beautiful and worth way more than $1 each. I've seen cards like this for over $4 in Target. They come in a box of 30 for $32.70 (including tax and shipping to me). We will get $13 from each box for our adoption fund and you'll get to save yourself the hassle of buying cards for the next year.

You can choose from two different boxes. Box 1 is contains a variety of cards, Box 2 comes with kids cards.

Watch this video to see how beautiful the cards are and then email me at kathywiehl@gmail.com to order.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

First, we found out that our LOA should be coming within a few weeks instead of a few months.

Then, people began wanting to help us. It's almost as if God decided that he would cause our adoption to move faster so that I'd have no choice but to accept outside help.

People I never knew cared, are now showing me that they care. And they want to help.

We sold lots of jewelry, became the Hope Suds family for August, a friend in another state is making cupcakes to help us, someone else I had never met (but now we are friends) is helping us with a Cards for a Cause fundraiser, another friend offered to help with a yard sale, someone donated $25 to our Reece's Rainbow account, and others have offered to help with various other fundraisers. I'll share about the other things soon.

THANK YOU!!!

You all have no idea how much I appreciate each and every person who has helped us. I hope I've done a good job of expressing this to each of you as you have helped. If not, please accept my apologies.

We do NOT deserve this! Not at all, but Lily does and on her behalf I thank you. Every donation, purchase, prayer....all of that will help give her a family and parents who love her so much. Thank you for helping us bring her home.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

We need your help desperately! No, I am not asking for donations. I want to give you a free necklace! Please keep reading!

LOA could come as early as 3 weeks. This is WONDERFUL and it means we'll get to bring Lily home about a month sooner than we had originally planned.

However, with this news we are also faced with having to come up with our fees about a month earlier than originally planned.

I'm learning that fundraising is a marathon, not a sprint! I can make this work if I sell jewelry every day, or list things on ebay every day, but at the moment we are still in the hole after switching agencies in June. You can read about that if you go to previous posts.

Right now we are trying to build traffic to the jewelry sale, so I am giving away this necklace for free! To enter, all you need to do is share our jewelry page (via facebook, twitter, or pinterest). This will help us sell more and help us pay our next set of agency fees. We need to raise about $3800 and so far this weekend I've sold about $250 in jewelry. I don't have enough jewelry to cover all of our fees, but if I can sell all of it, this will be a great start.

So, to win this necklace, just click on the link, then share our jewelry page (facebook, twitter, pinterest, or anywhere else). Let me know that you've shared. Maybe this will help us bring in enough sales to put a dent in that next agency bill. Thank you so much!!!

Friday, August 3, 2012

I am in a little bit of shock right now. If you've been following our adoption process you know that we've had more than our share of hiccups in the process.

So, I was expecting our LOA wait (the longest wait in the process) to take longer than the 70 day average. Even if it happened on an average time frame, it would be sometime in October. Some families wait much much longer than this.

Well. I guess God has other plans for us, because I heard from our agency today that we can expect our LOA in 3-5 weeks. That is about a month earlier than expected. Some people have even told me that theirs came in 2 weeks! We could have our LOA by the end of this month. That is insanely fast!

With this news comes our next agency bill and we need your help! There are ways to help us without making a donation! Please take a look at the How You Can Help page linked at the top of this blog. Thank you!!!

Adoption Timeline

10/25/11- Home study initiated1/8/12- Decide to adopt from China instead of Ukraine.4/23/12- Home study arrives at our home!4/23/12- Mailed USCIS6/1/12- USCIS approval6/18/12- First agency says we are DTC!!!6/19/12- First agency says we are NOT DTC and will not be until September!6/26/12- Decided to switch to a new agency.7/9/12- DTC!7/18/12- LID (dossier log in date)9/24/12- LOA!!!11/16/12- I800 approval11/28/12- NVC cable12/13/12- Article 512/26/12- Travel Approval1/21/12- Meet Lily!1/29/12- Consulate appointment in Guangzhou